


Smile Mile

by Lizardkisser



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Original Statement, Statement Fic, dont believe what you read on tumblr theres no mummified heart in this i took it out, i guess i can't categorically say not in a sexy way but please do not think sexy thoughts about this, i think this stopped qualifying as a joke around hour 5 but, muppets - Freeform, no profreading we die like mne, there is no further curse you can lay on me that is worse than what i already suffer, transformation? not in a sexy way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-12
Updated: 2019-11-12
Packaged: 2021-01-29 06:53:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21406003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardkisser/pseuds/Lizardkisser
Summary: Statement of Henson James, regarding his transformation into a puppet. Original statement given September 18, 1976. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Archivist of the Magnus Institute.
Comments: 19
Kudos: 58





	Smile Mile

[CLICK]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Henson James, regarding.... oh you can't be serious.

[DOOR OPENS]

ARCHIVIST

Martin? Tim? Is this some sick idea of a joke? Tim?

[DOOR CLOSES]

ARCHIVIST

[sigh] Statement of Henson James, regarding his transformation into a puppet. Original statement given September 18, 1976. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Archivist of the Magnus Institute. 

Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

Listen. I get it if you don't take me seriously. Not many people do these days. Sorry, that's a bad joke. I can't seem to stop making them. I don't know if that's part of the... curse, or whatever, or if it's just some kind of horrible coping mechanism. Honestly, I was kind of like that before all this happened. 

My name's Henson James. My mother used to joke and say she'd named me Handsome James, only the doctor misheard. A face like a picture, she'd say, or a statue. She was an artist, and there was always some kind of papier-mache model around that she could pick up and compare me to for a joke. I guess it was some sort of a rebellion that made me go into the TV industry. Not acting, of course -- I could never. But there's a lot of artistry that goes on behind the scenes, and I've always appreciated a job well done. A lot of people say there's no soul in it, that it's just selling out, and I suppose I don't technically have a passion for it, but it's given me the opportunity to try my hand at wildly different things and satisfy myself at all of them. 

So it would have been wrong to say I was excited for the contract with  _ Smile Mile _ . You know, the kid's show from a while back, the one that really brought puppeteering into kid's media, way back when. Not that the kids would ever be able to tell, but legend in the industry was that the  _ Avenue S  _ crew were insanely competitive with their work, on the cutting edge of puppeteering. Trust me, I know it sounds dumb, but there's a lot more to the field than you could ever imagine. They'd decided to bring me on because of my expertise in reupholstering furniture, actually, using a very specific type of fabric glue -- the details aren't important, but apparently the original puppets from the first run of the show were deteriorating, and that was the glue they used, so they thought I could help.

After a couple days on set, though, I was starting to rethink the whole thing. Contract be damned, pay be damned, even reputation be damned. The atmosphere in that place was stifling. I mean, it's a kid's show, so there's a lot of pastels and twee motivational stuff around -- fine. And interspersed with that there's a lot of serious adults just trying to get their jobs done -- fine. I know how a kid's show works. But  _ Smile Mile  _ lived up to its reputation for competition and intensity, and yet there was never so much as a scowl. The most I ever saw was a face screwed up in concentration as they tightened up their work or maneuvered a tricky screw into place. Nobody ever frowned, or raised their voice in anger, or so much as stuck a tongue out at each other. They'd just all be having this intense discussion about joint armature with this weird, reflexive, half smile on their faces, but their eyes and eyebrows all scrunched up with concentration. I mean, I've worked theme parks before, even at the Big D where they fry you for not worshiping the Mouse, but there weren't even any kids on set most of the time. Who were they pretending for?

And it's not like they were genuinely happy either. Actually, you could practically smell how miserable everybody was. I cracked a couple jokes here and there, you know, like I do, and all four or five of the guys I was working with just turned to me and gave me the coldest, completely mirthless "hah", in perfect sync. It was like they practiced it as much as they practiced their puppetry. But god forbid you ever let it slip. I came into work hungover one day -- just a little, you know, Saint Monday and all -- and I could feel their horrible smiles on me all morning until I bucked up and just grinned through the headache. 

The worst of all was the head guy, Maggie Welles. I don't mean she was in charge or anything, though she kind of was. I mean she was literally in charge of heads. Eyeball rigs, jaw holds, she even built this amazing lip rig for Charles Horse. Maggie lived and breathed the job. She'd been there longer than any of us. If I had to guess, I'd say it was her that started the whole smiling thing, except that it affected the whole set and not just the puppetry guys. But we all took her word as gospel. I didn't mind, you know, she clearly knew what she was doing, and she actually made the smiles feel less fake than anyone else. But this one time Bobby Miller hit his thumb with a hammer or something and reeled back, biting his lip for a second before just letting out every foul word known to man. And he knew all of them. It was like he'd dropped a bomb on the set -- I literally saw some of the puppeteers dive for cover. Of course my first reaction was to panic and see if any nearby sets were filming, but fortunately most of the meat-and-bones puppet work takes place in the workshop pretty far from the set. Still, I saw Maggie set her tools down, very deliberately, and glide over to Bobby. She took his hand, very matronly, and made a big fuss about checking his thumb over. But then she abruptly stopped, tapped Bobby on the cheek, and said, "Smiles, please."

Bobby stared at her like she was insane. I thought she was making a horrible joke -- you know,  _ smiles, please _ , it's the catchphrase of the show.  _ Smile Mile _ . But Maggie never went so far as to actually laugh. That half-smile of hers just widened another fraction. She told Bobby it looked pretty bad, actually, but she had some cream in her car, follow him. So Bobby, bewildered, followed her to her car, and we got back to our work. You've got to understand, it was only Bobby's second week. When he didn't show up for work again, we assumed he'd quit or even been fired for letting loose like that. It's a legitimate concern on a kid's show, I suppose. But Maggie had handled it so gently that nobody was.... concerned, if that makes sense. It didn't register as something to worry about.

They say hindsight is 20/20, you know, and I know I'm just making excuses for myself now, but you've got to understand that there are a lot of quirky personalities in the industry, and a lot of egos, and poking either of those things is a great way to kill your career, so you learn to just live with it. A lot of it relaxes off the set, outside that pressure-cooker sort of mentality, and since we went for drinks a night or two after work I got to see the guys as more regular people. You know, Nick was going through a divorce, and that's rough, but Robin had some genuinely fascinating insights into the evolution of puppetry over the years and the split between kids' media and adults'. And Maggie was just like that all the time -- mostly smiling, like she was a little absent but genuinely enjoying herself, or at least politely nodding along. 

Actually, I thought she might have been, uh, interested in me. I caught her staring at my face once or twice, and when she noticed me noticing her she'd just give me that little smile and nod. I mean, I was flattered, and I even flatter myself that the nickname Handsome Jack isn't too far out of place on me. Besides, a couple of the guys on  _ Smile Mile _ had this habit of cataloguing interesting faces or celebrities and picking out what might make a good puppet. You know, a wide mouth, bulging eyes, high cheekbones to hide the jaw rigging, that sort of thing. Maggie volunteered me for that once or twice, which was pretty weird, but I thought if it wasn't romantic interest it might be professional. Weird, pretty creepy, but not the worst thing I've dealt with in coworkers.

Sometimes, though, I'd look into her eyes and see... nothing there. All the lights on but nobody home. 

But mostly, I was occupied with the work they called me in for, and it was genuinely interesting. See, on  _ Smile Mile _ every puppet is actually a set of two or three puppets: a couple of smaller hand puppets for closeups, although those are still about the size of a torso, and then a big puppet suit that a whole person can get in for full-body shots or to interact with kids. The hand puppets got rotated in and out, but the large suits get used pretty rarely. At some point they'd replaced the suits for the five original characters -- Freddy Bear, Charlie Horse, that lot -- but had left the old ones in storage somewhere. Whatever they did, it left the suits mildewed and stained and the metal supports rusted and even snapped in some places. They were thinking of putting the originals in a museum or something, though, and they wanted me to tell them if they could be restored or repaired, and to what extent. 

I'll tell you, it was grueling work, and it stank, but I didn't really mind it. It was genuinely fascinating pulling apart every layer of those puppets and seeing all the careful work that had gone into them, all the interwoven expertise in felt and foam and springs that brought them to life and made them feel natural enough that kids could feel at home with them. The thing about those suits is they're meant for a person to fit in, but a pretty small person -- maybe 60% of the volume is actually hollow. The rest is all rigging and armature, since the proportions are so weird that your arm can't actually reach all the way to the hand, and meanwhile your other arm has to control the facial expressions. There are a lot of springs, and pulleys, and all kinds of clever mechanisms, all packed up in foam and felt. That's a lot of filling. 

I actually managed to restore most of Big Bunny on my own, though it took nearly a week to soak all the... foreign contaminants out of the ears. But that was nothing compared to what I found in Freddy Bear. See, I unzipped the back, and this horrible smell hit me, so I thought maybe some kind of animal had gotten inside, maybe used it as a nest or just died in there. Even before that, years of sweat would have soaked into the fabric, and Freddy Bear was kind of the mascot so he would have gotten the most use. So I went and got some hazmat gloves, and then I reached in through the zipper, all the way up to my elbow, and then deeper, and deeper. But no matter how deep I reached, my hand didn't come out into the hollow interior. It was just solid, slightly crunchy foam. 

It was pretty late at this point, or maybe it was a half-day or something and I didn't get the memo, because when I looked around the workshop was empty and dark. I wanted to ask someone if Freddy Bear had been used to store extra material, or maybe if this wasn't the real Freddy Bear and maybe just some kind of solid-stuffing prop to pose with, but nobody was around. I figured I was a professional, though. That, or the horrible smell was getting to me, making it hard to think. Either way, I pulled a lamp over to shine down behind me. I laid Freddy Bear down on his face, pulled the zipper down as far as it could go, and pulled his back apart to try and get a glimpse inside. 

Sure enough, it looked like Freddy Bear was almost solidly foam, with just a slit cut through it like you'd expect if it were just an outer layer, but the foam went all the way through. The slit that I had been putting my hand through looked like it also went all the way through, but the foam -- or whatever liquid, I prayed to God just rainwater, had soaked through the foam -- had also sort of fused it together in spots so I couldn't really pull it apart all along the length. It was really unpleasant, and the fluorescent lamp really highlighted all the stains and horrible crunchy texture of moistened-and-dried foam.

With a pair of scissors I cut along the seam, hoping to uncover the cavity inside, but eventually I had to face it: there was no cavity inside. The seam or slit was just a long tunnel, more like a stab wound through the foam, that didn't lead to anything. But why did this Freddy Bear have a zipper if he wasn't supposed to be worn? I put my hand back in, trying to wiggle around and maybe find some old electronics, some evidence of rigging, anything at all, but instead the back of my arm bumped into something solid suspended in the foam. I spent a good couple minutes trying to fumble my way to the object, but eventually I had to cut it out, and then I really wished I hadn't. 

What I pulled out of the Freddy Bear puppet was, unquestionably, a mummified heart. A real one. I didn't know if it was a human heart, but it was about the size of my fist, and I distantly thought that seemed about right. I went into shock, maybe. I put it down on my workbench very carefully and then I swung the workbench over to examine it. It was strangely waxy, and I spent a minute or two trying to convince myself that it might be plastic, or maybe rubber. It kind of had the texture of vulcanized rubber. It was astonishingly detailed, though, all the little veins along the top. The aorta and whatever hadn't been cut or anything, it looked more like that part had just withered and come off, and I couldn't justify to myself why anyone would make a model of that. I pushed my worklight away slowly, and then any conscious decision, I started to scream.

Maggie was there in an instant. I could have sworn she hadn't been there before, but she was holding me as I pointed at the heart and gabbled and screamed. She calmed me down slowly, grabbed her phone and dialed 911 and promised the police would be here in a minute. She helped me over to a chair, and then she got me something to drink. I sipped it slowly and she told me to tell her everything that had happened. I tried, starting with the zipper, but it was so hard to keep it all straight in my head. Was it really foam I had felt? Was that really the texture my hand had encountered? Maggie kept talking to me slowly, telling me to keep talking, to tell her everything, but it can't have been more than a few minutes before I blacked out.

Now we don't often work with raw wool, but you can use it to make felt if you need to patch a puppet up and you can use it as stuffing, so there's usually a big batch already carded soft and fine sitting around a workshop somewhere. That's what I thought had happened when I woke up; I thought maybe I'd fainted onto it, or Maggie had tried to heft me onto it and dropped me face first. My face was pressed up against thick, soft wool, and it kind of felt like my head was full of wool too, it was so fuzzy. But when I tried to move, tried to push myself up off the pile, I couldn't move. It felt like my entire body was covered in wool, actually, buried in it. It didn't hurt, it wasn't crushing me or anything, I'm sure a mattress salesman somewhere would have killed to replicate the sensation, but I was completely cocooned. 

As soon as I had the thought, it started feeling like I was suffocating. My own breath was hot in my mouth and nostrils, and I started thrashing around, screaming for help. The thickness of the wool or the aftereffects of whatever Maggie did to me, though, choked both the sound and movement of my body. And now all I could taste was fluff in my mouth, coating my tongue and threatening to expand down my throat. But it had some effect. Through the thick wool over my eyes, I could see a light begin to shine: the LED worklight from my station. Maggie's voice reached my ears, though I couldn't make out the words. Someone responded. Robin, maybe? I thrashed a little harder, and felt someone grab me to hold me still. They whispered in my ears, and the only words that filtered through the wool were "work of art". Then the stabbing began.

Do you know how wool is made into felt? I mean, you can heat and crush and press it in giant machines, obviously, that's how they make bulk pads of it. Usually that's what we use too. But when we need to start from scratch, we employ a technique called needle felting. You take a needle that's very sharp and very jagged or hooked, and you just start.... stabbing, over and over and over again, about a million times. The hooks grab the fibers and tangle them up, so the whole thing gets denser and tighter as it pulls outer fibers in and inner fibers out. I screamed again, as the needles started jabbing through the wool and into me. They must have been damn big needles, to pierce through all that wool and into my skin, maybe even like harpoons. I had the feverish thought that they were grabbing my skin like fibers, tangling it up with the wool, making it part of the felt. And there weren't just two needles, either, it felt like there were hundreds, all over my body, all at once, all the time. I screamed and screamed and screamed until I literally choked on the fibers, I couldn't breathe, but my vision refused to black out and my body refused to grant me the mercy of unconsciousness. I was aware of every moment of that time-consuming, painstaking, carefully-executed work. I think the worst part was the eyes.

I can only imagine what I must have looked like when they stood back to admire their handiwork: mouth gaping open silently, eyes staring glassily, pleading. Maggie came forth with the piece de resistance: Freddy Bear's face, which they had apparently cut off. I could see the faceless Freddy Bear in the corner, a rotted skull now exposed and peeking out from the foam it was still embedded in. Through the terror I spared a moment to wonder if my foam was going to turn to flesh on its own, or if they had to mummify me specially for that. Then they covered my face with Freddy Bear's face. I'll spare you the details of how carefully they lined my lips up with his, and so forth. After all, a puppet that can't talk isn't much good at all. But I felt them installing the zipper along my spine, and I have to tell you that my flesh did not turn to foam on its own.

When they were done, Maggie said, "I always thought you might be pretty handsome." Then they turned out the lights and left. In the darkness, I thought I heard weeping, but I couldn't do anything but sit there in the dark, my mouth and eyes hanging dumbly open.

Then came morning. Now I knew why I never seemed to be the first one on set, no matter how early I arrived. Maggie walked into my line of sight, flipping through the script, and turned to me. She said, "Come on, then, you're on for the next scene." Just like that, I stood up. I waddled that idiot waddle that Freddy Bear always does, that only now makes sense to me -- it's a lot harder to coordinate your legs without an actual flesh-and-bone pelvis. Just before we walked on set, Maggie stopped me. She tapped my cheek and said, "Smiles, please." My mouth flopped open in that dumb unpuppeted smile and she sent me onset.

The kids loved me. They crawled all over me and the whole time I was silently screaming, pleading, praying for any one of them to recognize the nightmare in front of them. Every horror movie I'd seen said that kids were supposed to be in tune with that kind of thing. But happy music played and pastel letters rolled past and the kids thought I was such a funny clumsy bear knocking into things and tripping over myself. For five years I screamed and screamed and screamed and screamed.

It took me five years to learn how to move on my own. I think, if I had actually cared about the show in the first place, it would have wrapped me right up and I would have forgotten I was ever anything else. But I only came to  _ Smile Mile  _ for a challenge, and that kept me going. I still can't *not* do what Maggie and the other puppeteers tell me to, and I definitely won't let on that I can do what I can. It's not much, actually. I'm amazed I've managed to write such a coherent letter. But I worked special effects for a ghost show once that mentioned your Institute, and I'm begging you to listen, to call the police, the Ghostbusters, anything. Just this once, don't laugh at me.

ARCHIVIST

[sigh] Statement ends. Well. That was.... insane. It sounds like a horror writer tried to write a joke, or maybe vice versa. But... here's Gertrude's handwriting with the case number, 0760918, and it was filed with all her others. I can't believe she was taken in by this as well, but I'll chalk it up to another example of her incipient dementia.

The show  _ Smile Mile _ is now defunct. A mysterious fire destroyed many key props, and what remained went to a charity auction to cover medical expenses and such. I believe the burnt remains of a Freddy Bear suit went to one Jurgen Leitner. Perhaps he truly believed in its supernatural properties, or perhaps he was just looking to add to his... collection. Either way, I am almost certain that by now it and any other puppets from  _ Smile Mile _ have been destroyed. [pause] Almost.

End recording.

[RECORDER CLICKS]

**Author's Note:**

> i lied about the heart  
i made up a lot of things about muppets and fabric for this please dont come for me in my sleep and bimbofy me into a muppet  
the needle felting thing is real though  
sorry jonathan sims. im very sorry. sorry  
EDIT: now with a [podfic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21727528) by [thelizards](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelizards/pseuds/thelizards), who was so kind as to create an absolutely terrifying image


End file.
